How to Manage a Young Team

When you were just starting out in the corporate world, you learned how to work in a team, and eventually you picked up the leadership style of your boss. Now that it’s your turn to manage your own team, you might be finding it a bit tough to lead a group using the leadership style that your former boss used.

The reason? Change. The staff of today works much differently from the staff of yesterday, be it in finance jobs or in banking jobs. If you have a team composed of people aged 30 and below, then it means that you are managing a young team. They are popularly known as Generation Y, a generation that knows what they want, and expects you to give them that.

Another noteworthy trait of Generation Y teams is that they are very tech-savvy, and they know the possibilities that it has for their work to become easier and more efficient. Technology is one of the biggest factors that contribute to their attitude towards work. In a sense, their use of technology has caused old management ways to become outdated and useless.

For instance, if before, an employee has to spend a substantial amount of time in a company to get to a high position, this is not the case anymore. The young generation of employees knows that time spent in the company can only do so much for one to be given a higher position. In other words, they are willing to move from one company to the other until they find one where their skills will be developed.

If you are handling a team of young people today, here are some tips you can use to bridge the gaps and lead them well:

• Listen to them. Listening does not only involve hearing what they are saying. You need to learn how you can understand them better. Watch out for cues and pay attention to puzzle pieces that will help you figure out how you can lead them better. The young professionals of today are far from timid; they will tell you what they think will work and what won’t. Be open to their suggestions.
• Learn how to turn down their suggestions well. Expect out of the box ideas from your team. They are very likely to be more ideal than you are, so learn how to balance being rational without killing the idealism that they have. If they have a suggestion, don’t turn it down quickly. Give yourself time to think about it, and if it really isn’t doable, turn it down with much appreciation for their contributions to the team.

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Highest Paying Industries in Singapore

The Ministry of Manpower recently released the Labour Market Highlights from 2011 to 2012. In this report, one can easily gauge the current performance of the industry in which he belongs. Based on the data and information provided in the report, here are the top industries where you can thrive and succeed as an executive.

It is important to note that banking and financial jobs are not doing as well as before, since these industries have inconsistent salary ranges, therefore providing a rather unstable trend dangerous for any executive. Moreover, the trends show that the industries that require highly specialized skills are the ones that pay well.

Information Technology/Communications

• Enterprise Architect. Responsible for coordinating the technological strategies of the company to the business aspect of it, the enterprise architect conducts a lot of legwork to ensure that all strategies are in line with the company’s current direction. They say that with great power comes great responsibility; an enterprise architect may get as much as SGD 8,000 to SGD 14,000 a month, but is expected to work under immense time pressure and stress coming from the different spectrums of the company.
• Project Manager. Lower in rank than the enterprise architect, the project manager is responsible for creating strategies for different tech projects. In a sense, he coordinates with the architect to ensure that the parameters he set for a project falls under the standards and limits of the company. You may earn around SGD 6,000 to SGD 8,500 based on the compensation package that you deserve based on your experience and the company’s ability to pay.

Engineering

• Aircraft maintenance engineer. With a huge responsibility on his hands, the aircraft maintenance engineer needs to make sure that all aircrafts are in good running condition. In a sense, an airline’s reputation is dictated by how well their aircraft maintenance engineers perform; if a plane crashes because of faulty aircraft, the biggest name to get hurt is that of the airline instead of the engineer. You may earn SGD 4,800 to SGD 8,500 a month as a licensed aircraft engineer.
• Production engineer. Manufacturing companies rely on their production engineers to ensure that their resources spent on production are used as efficiently as possible. Delays and faults in the production aspect of a company will snowball into huge problems that will prove difficult to handle for the marketing and reputation handling departments. If you are a graduate of chemical or mechanical engineering, you have a chance of getting this job that earns as much as SGD 5,000 to SGD 8,000.

Maritime

• Ship Charterer. Your years of experience in your current company may merit for a career in the maritime industry, particularly as a ship charterer. You will be in charge of ensuring that cargo deliveries are always on time and smooth sailing. Should you decide to pursue this career, you can expect a salary range from SGD 6,000 to SGD 7,500.

Athlete Tips You Can Apply to Your Career

The London Olympics is getting closer, and fans are thrilled to watch the biggest athletic event in the world. Followers of different sports are looking forward to the display of strength, endurance and excellence from the country representatives. Executives in finance jobs, banking jobs and even media jobs can learn a thing or two from athletes. Here are some athlete lessons that you can apply to your career.

• Know the field. Before you play, you first need to know the field where you will be competing. Without prior surveying of the game venue, you might end up committing mistakes that could have been avoided if only you prepared. Research about the company that you want to join.

• Know the rules. If you do not know the rules of the game, you’ll be disqualified. Your skills and competency will not matter; the rules of the game are fair and should be honored. In the corporate field, there are unwritten and written rules that you should follow carefully.
• Know your competition. Boxers and their coaches spend so much time watching the past games of their competition. They analyze each and every move; calculate the precise number and force of the blows of the boxer that they’d go against. Identify the skills and capabilities of other executives in your level and industry. What are you missing out on? Do you see yourself as someone who belongs to the top of the list, or do you see the need to practice more and upskill in order for you to beat them?
• Wear your uniform. There’s a reason why swimmers wear swimsuits, and why runners don running shoes. The uniforms they wear aren’t just for show; they serve a purpose by helping them move and perform better. In the same way, the way you dress in the office and during your job interviews will help you feel good or bad about yourself. Get to know the clothing pieces that you feel confident in, and make sure that they are always ready for when you need to be in the playing field.
• Develop the ability to work with a team. You can’t possibly win in a game singlehandedly. You need other people to help you reach your goals of winning. Get to know your team and do your best to adjust to the dynamics of working with a group. Your mindset should be focused on winning, but you should also think of helping the players in your team. Aside from working well with your team, you should also learn how to build contacts outside of your team. Who knows, the next person you connect to in LinkedIn may be the person who will help you achieve your goals of winning the corporate Olympics.

How to Get to Know a Company Better

You finally get a call for an interview. You prepare your answers to common interview questions for the accounting job or executive job that you are applying for, and you ready your best corporate attire. If you think that you have done enough, you’ll most likely flunk your interview for lack of studying. Do not miss one essential point of interview preparation: researching about the company. How will you excellently answer the following questions if you didn’t research about the company that you’re joining?

Why do you want to work in this company?

How did you find out about this job opening?

How can you contribute to the company and to your team?

While there are other variations to the three questions listed above, they all have one purpose: to test what you know, if you know, about the company that you want to be part of. If the interviewer sees that you have very little idea about the company, it will easily come off as an impression that you really aren’t interested in the position in the company; you just want to get a job and get paid.

And while that may be the very reason why you want to join a company, you still need to impress any interviewer by knowing enough about a company and showing it through your interview. Here are some tips:

• Check their LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn has evolved from being a place for professionals, to being a reflection of the corporate world. Companies and corporations have LinkedIn pages, so make sure you check out your target company’s. Check who the members are, and have a glimpse of the type of people who you will work with soon.
• Conduct a financial review. Not to check whether or not the company is doing well, but so that you can see where the money goes. A financial review may be all numbers, but the insights that you can get are highly valuable and helpful in your application. If, for instance, you see in their financial review that shows bulk of the money is spent in building a new branch in a new location, then you can easily say that they are starting to expand the company.
• Read past press releases. Press releases are created and published to announce big news. Check back on the company’s previous press releases to see what they had been prioritizing the past years and what the story of the company has been.
• Check the company from the client’s perspective. Its products and/or services largely define a company. Although you do not have to buy their products or avail of their services, you may check reviews and product descriptions at the least.

Email Mistakes to Avoid

You can’t blame any HR representative for judging your ability to perform as an employee based on your email messages. After all, an email message may be your first “handshake” with an employer. You need to make sure that you do not commit any of the email mistakes listed below, to have more chances of getting called for an interview and ultimately, being offered a job.
Ineffective subject line

• Make sure the format, spelling and grammar are all correct.
• Use relevant keywords such as “Application for Finance Job Position” instead of just writing “Application”.
• Check if it looks targeted. Some job applicants use a single email message for all their job applications. As a result, the subject message includes a “Fwd” tag, signifying that the recipient is only one among the many employers that received an application. Remove it and make sure that it appears as if the email is specifically sent to the employer.

Bad email address

• Do not use your company email address. This is a major turnoff, and besides, your current office may track your email messages, revealing that you’re looking for another job, and during business hours at that.
• Use a professional email hosting. You don’t have to buy an email address. A Gmail account is free and is more than enough to project a professional image. Just skip the “@cuteandcuddly.com” type of email addresses and leave them for personal use.
• Use a professional name. You may use your complete name in your email address, such as janedoe@gmail.com. To enhance it, why not include a descriptive word, such as janedoeCPA@gmail.com? Avoid numbers; no recruiter will understand that janedoe0419 indicated the date of your birth.

Unprofessional opening

• Know who the addressee is. “To whom it may concern:” is old and boring and highly ineffective. Impress the recruiter by checking the name of the recipient of the email, and place is or her name at the beginning of your message. “Dear Gabriel:” is better than “Dear Mr/Mrs Doe” or “Dear Sir/Madame”. A “Hello Gabriel” is even better, as it sounds livelier and more personal.
• If you are addressing somebody with a title, include it. Professors, doctors and generals are better addressed more formally. They spent years getting that title; acknowledging them with it is the least that you can do to impress them. The casual addressing is ideal for other positions such as banking jobs and IT jobs where most working environments are the shirt and jeans type.

Turned down? How to Get Feedback after an Unsuccessful Interview

When applying for executive jobs, an interview may be unsuccessful due to a number of factors:

• You were up against someone who had more experience than you
• The successful candidate had something that you didn’t possess
• The recruiter had a better feeling about the other candidate

In other words, you might do your best in an interview and still don’t land the job. A typical employee can simply walk away and move on to the next interview. But a successful executive, may he be looking for accounting jobs or managerial positions, knows tat every interview is an opportunity to learn and to even enrich a network.

To stop the guessing game, get feedback from your interviewer and ask for constructive opinion on how you can improve on yourself. For one, it will make a good impression on the interviewer. Moreover, you will learn faster with feedback than, well, without any. Here are some tips on how you can ask for constructive feedback after an interview:

• Ask for advice on how you can be a more effective communicator. Let the interviewer know that you value feedback. This way, he or she will be more open to the idea of giving you pointers.
• Take note of the advice given to you, and summarize it back to the interviewer. This way, you can ensure that you hear everything correctly and you don’t miss out on any valuable feedback given to you.
• Do not argue. If the interviewer gives you feedback that you think is wrong, resist the urge to argue. Do not be defensive; it is the enemy of improvement. Be open to suggestions and even if you know for sure that the interviewer’s opinion of you is wrong, use it to evaluate yourself and to improve on anything that might need it.
• Ask the interviewer for other vacancies that you can apply in. The interviewer may know of positions that will open in the near future. Since you already have a lead among other future candidates, you will have a better chance of getting that position even if it is still unadvertised. If you get considered for the other vacant positions, then you know that you were simply up against someone more competent and equipped.
• Let the interviewer know that you are very interested in the position. In case the other candidate declines the offer, you might be considered for the position instead. Surely your boldness to ask for feedback will make you a memorable candidate.
• Thank the interviewer for the time and feedback that they give you. A simple thank you can go a long mile, especially when given to an interviewer who talks with a handful of people every day.